


Hermit Crabs

by dipping_sauce (metabaron)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Present Tense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-08-14
Updated: 2003-08-14
Packaged: 2018-01-16 00:29:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1324972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/metabaron/pseuds/dipping_sauce
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The hermit crab is a species of crab that salvages abandoned seashells for shelter."</p><p>Voldemort is gone. How one wizard copes in the aftermath.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hermit Crabs

He is the youngest professor in the history of Hogwarts. 

He is the youngest Head of House, too. 

He has always been the youngest to achieve a great many things. 

* * *

He stalks the hallways of the school late at night, sleep having become as elusive as the students only wished they were. 

"Miss Bradley. Miss Reeve. Fifty points from Ravenclaw. Each. Now return to your dormitory before I give you detention." 

They glare at him as he passes. 

Hatred was far easier to engender in his students that friendship, and the effort was oh so much more pleasant. 

He smirks, trusting the shadows to hide his pleasure from the two girls. 

* * *

He loathes teaching 

He loathes the cretinous first years who can't even tell which end of their cauldron to put the ingredients in. 

He loathes the imbecilic fourth years who cannot follow simple instructions and then end up with their shoes melting off their feet out of their sheer ignorance of basic potions theory. 

He especially loathes the lazy seventh years who think they can purchase his favour with their alternatingly awkward, uninspired and revolting sexual advances. 

* * *

He only stays at Hogwarts because there is nowhere left for him to go. 

* * *

The Mark still burns. 

It should not, it should not, and yet it does. 

"It's psychosomatic," McKibbons tells him, pulling out some dusty Muggle medical text. 

It's all in your head. 

But McKibbons is a Muggle-obsessed fool who tries to pass his madness on to all students who pass through his classroom. McKibbons does not understand. He can never understand, for fool as McKibbons is, he was never quite fool enough. 

And the Mark still burns. 

* * *

It took a little under a year before his colleagues' sympathy became disgust. He took great pride in that. 

* * *

Summer holidays and still he remains at Hogwarts. His family home holds too many memories, too many ghosts for him to feel welcome. 

He has stopped visiting the village on weekends. He rarely ever leaves the grounds anymore, and even then it is only to replenish his stores with ingredients that cannot be transported safely by owl. 

The school is his sanctuary. It is the only place he has ever felt secure. And even that is sometimes fleeting. 

* * *

He drinks coffee in the staff room. 

He watches Minerva watch him. She has long since given up trying to make him see 'reason', and seems to have now settled for occasional meaningful looks. 

She thinks she is helping. 

She does not understand. 

* * *

He is not unhappy. 

This is simply the best he could make out of his life, given all that he has done. 

It is not quite defeat. It is not quite penance. Even he is not quite sure what it is. 

* * *

He showers. He does it infrequently enough that the students joke about an allergy to soap. (It is simply that he does not enjoy being nude. He sees too many reminders of his mistakes.) 

The bathroom is full of steam when he turns off the taps and wraps a towel around his waist. He pads across the room to the sink, stepping carefully as to not slip on the slick tiles. 

He pushes his lank hair out of his eyes and wipes the steam from the glass, scowling when he meets his reflection's gaze. 

Somedays Draco Malfoy hardly recognises the person he sees in the mirror.


End file.
